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Two months before her death, the Shafias’ eldest daughter left home and sought refuge at a women’s shelter. After a few weeks, her mother convinced her to return home.

In May 2009, Zainab was briefly married to a young man her family had warned her was an unacceptable match. The union was annulled the day after the couple wed because the Shafias were outraged that the young man’s family failed to attend the wedding celebration.

Zainab told her day-old spouse that she could not stay with him because the marriage had humiliated her family.

Sahar Shafia

Age at the time of death: 17

The year before she was killed, Sahar opened up to teachers and a social worker about the violence and intimidation she faced at home. She confided to a Youth Protection social worker that she had taken pills, not to kill herself but rather to escape her family life.

Three of her former teachers from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry school in St. Léonard testified about how sad Sahar had seemed the previous year and detailed the torment and abuse Sahar confessed being subjected to at the hands of her brother and father.

Geeti Shafia

Age at time of death: 13

Geeti was described at trial as being the fearless sibling. In the year before her death, she was failing all of her classes, and was acting out.

“My sister and I are afraid in the house when my father is there, we know that when we are at school we have to be careful because our behaviour is reported back to home."

Rona Amir Mohammad

Age at the time of death: 52

Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife. Unable to bear children, her husband took a second wife in their native Afghanistan. Mohammad was referred to affectionately as “auntie” by her husband’s children with his second wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya.

To avoid tipping off authorities to their polygamous family, Mohammad was presented to immigration officials as Yahya’s cousin who was coming to Canada to help at home.

Mohammad Shafia, 58: Evidence presented at the three-month-long trial painted the businessman as enraged because he felt his daughters had shamed him by violating strict cultural rules about sexual modesty. He felt they dressed in revealing clothes and they were disobedient. Wiretap recordings played during the trial, Shafia is overheard cursing his dead daughters as “whores,” “prostitutes,” and “honourless girls.”

Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42: Yahya is Mohammad Shafia’s second wife and the mother of his seven children. Yahya gave Sahar, the couple’s third child, to her husband’s first wife to raise as her own. After hearing the verdict, Yahya told the court: “I am not a murderer, I am a mother - a mother.”

Angel Ricardo Ruano Sanchez: Sanchez secretly dated Sahar for four months leading up to her death. Sanchez testified at the trial of her parents and her adult brother that the couple often talked about moving to his native Honduras and marrying. He testified they kept the relationship secret out of fear of the reaction of her family. He believed the family would not approve of a relationship because he was Spanish-speaking Christian and she was Muslim. Sahar’s younger brother testified at the trial of his parents and older brother that he once bumped into Sahar and Sanchez at a restaurant near their school. The couple sprang apart when they noticed him and Sanchez even kissed another girl to deflect suspicion that they were seeing each other.

Fazil Javid: Yahya’s brother, who lives in Sweden, testified that Shafia tried to recruit him to lure Zainab to Sweden, where she and her father and uncle and other family members would go on a picnic near a river or ocean. “He told me that we will put her in water and drown her,” Javid testified.

Latif Hyderi: Yahya’s uncle testified that Shafia told him he wanted to kill his oldest daughter Zainab because she had shamed him by running away from home and marrying an unacceptable young Pakistani man, acts that made her, in her father’s eyes, a “whore” and a “prostitute.”

Diba Masoomi: Rona Amir Mohammad’s younger sister testified that Mohammad told her she had overheard Shafia discussing a plot to kill Zainab and another family member. “Shafia was talking to Hamed and Tooba, (saying), ‘I will go to Afghanistan, I will prepare the passport, I will sell my property and then I will come and kill Zainab,’ ” Masoomi testified.

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